Hirsch joined Marketplace in 2007, just as the credit crunch that preceded the 2008 financial crisis began to take hold. As editor of the New York Bureau and the entrepreneurship desk, he spearheaded Marketplace’s financial markets coverage throughout the crisis and as the economy fell into recession. He was awarded a Knight Fellowship at Stanford University in 2010, and he returned to Marketplace in July of 2011, when he was appointed Senior Producer of Marketplace Money. He published his first book, Man vs Markets, in August 2012.

Hirsch got his start in journalism with an internship at the BBC in Glasgow, Scotland. He became a field producer for CNBC in Hong Kong and later was a consultant to the Open Broadcast Network in Bosnia. He has been an editor for Direct Capital Markets, Institutional Investor Newsletters, Standard & Poor’s, and the Vietnam Economic Times. Prior to becoming a journalist, he served as an officer in the Royal Marines.

Hirsch attended Campbell College in Belfast and received a bachelor’s degree in French and International Studies from the University of Warwick. He is a Knight Fellow and was a Webby honoree in 2009.

JP Morgan Asset Management has released a thumping great 42-page "Guide to Retirement", which is both interesting and valuable, but reads somewhat like every other document you ever got from a bank.

That said, it does have some very colorful and useful illustrations.

Including this one, which everyone, regardless of age, should stare at until it becomes part of thier very essence. It's a chart showing the value of saving, saving early, saving for a long tme and, most importantly, not touching your savings at any point. It shows, in other words, the value of compounding. To understand how compounding works, you could read and digest the entire JPM document, or you could save yourself some time and check out this 90-second explainer.

News that the Federal Trade Commission is poking its nose into the company Herbalife probably had investor Bill Ackman jumping around on his desk, with his fists clenched and his eyes squeezed shut, going "Yesssssss!"

Ackman is a big-time investor who has made a billion-dollar bet (actually $1.2 billion) against Herbalife. He's like a gambler at a race track putting a huge chunk of money on a horse to not finish the race. Ackman's argument is that the horse (Herbalife) is such a busted up old nag that it will drop dead before it reaches the finish line. Herbalife, he says, is a pyramid scheme and a parasitic business model that simply can't sustain itself. The company, he argues, will eventually drop dead, and anyone who has invested in it will lose all their money.

Ackman's opponents say that he's more like a gambler who has made a huge bet, and is determined to make it pay by bad-mouthing the horse. Ackman, they say, has been publicly smearing the company for the last two years in order to drive the stock down.

Patrick Curtis, of WallSteet Oasis, puts it like this: "Ackman's money-making strategy is called short-selling. He has effectively borrowed $1.2 billion worth of Herbalife shares and sold them. If the price of Herbalife shares fall, he can close the transaction by buying and returning the shares at a lower price and pocketing the difference. For example, if the value of the Herbalife stock that Ackman sold dropped by $500 million (or about 40%), then he would be able to close out the position for $700 million and profit roughly $500 million (excluding fees and borrowing costs). "

Curtis says it's important to note that Ackman does not own the shares after the transaction is closed. He never owned them and when he buys and returns, it's all done through an intermediary, such as a brokerage house or bank in one step.

Unfortunately, things haven't gone quite so smoothly. Instead of going down, the stock's price has risen. By more than 50 percent. Ackman is now, in trader parlance, "out of the money," which means if Ackman had to return the shares he owes today, he'd end up paying a lot more for them than he got when he sold them way back when.

And that's why the FTC decision is such a big deal for Ackman. He's hoping the regulators will drill into Herbalife and vindicate his claims that it is, in fact, a pyramid scheme. If that happens, investors will likely run for the hills, the stock will almost certainly crash, and Ackman will make out like a bandit. But if the FTC says Herbalife is fine, then Ackman could find himself very badly needing a drink.

Full disclosure: my Dad used to sell Herbalife products. He had a big sign on his car saying "Lose Weight Now - Ask Me How!" (It was super embarrassing.)

In its latest list, Forbes pegs his net worth at $76 billion. Net worth is just another way of saying wealth, where wealth = assets - debt.

Debt is pretty simple – it’s what you owe. Assets, meanwhile, are what you own.

Assets can be a bit confusing, though, because sometimes debt can be an asset.

Confused? Here's a short video explaining what assets are.

So what are Bill Gates' assets?

The vast majority of Gates' money is invested. Through his Cascade Investment Fund, he's put money into both private and public companies – about 17 percent is sunk into Microsoft.

It's hard to value those private companies, because they're not publicly traded, so you can't say what Gates' holdings are worth until he actually sells them, or they go public. The public companies, like Microsoft, can be valued, and that's where Gates has seen the biggest gains. And there's some cash, of course. Gates gets $250,000 each year for serving as a director on Microsoft's board. And there are the dividends that he earns on many of the public company shares that he owns. Maybe he uses that money for household expenses, or maybe he plows it back into his investment fund. Or maybe he just leaves it in the bank, and takes advantage of one of the easiest money makers in the world: compounding.

King Digital Entertainment makes the popular and addictive "Candy Crush Saga" smartphone game. And Tuesday the company said it would parlay that success into an initial public offering -- of up to $500 million on the New York Stock Exchange. But if you thought "Candy Crush Saga" was the only bullet in King's revolver, think again:

Together, those games account for 248 million daily game plays. ("Candy Crush Saga" accounts for 1,085 million daily game plays.)

"Candy Crush Saga" has been the highest-grossing game app on iTunes, Facebook, and Google Play, but the company's other games have hit No. 5 on iTunes, No. 3 on Google Play, and No. 4 and No. 7 on Facebook.

In December 2013, an average of 128 million daily active users played the company's games more than 1.2 billion times per day. That means if just 10 percent of users paid $1 a day to get to the next level of the game (or whatever), the company would have booked nearly $13 million a day.